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Kells, Irish Historic Towns Atlas no. 4
BOOK REVIEWS
236
WILLIAM J. SMYTH and KEVIN WHELAN (Eds), Common Ground: Essays on the Historical Geography of Ireland (Cork: Cork University Press, 1988. Pp. xvi + 323. IRg24.00)
This fascinating and erudite collection of essays is a festschrift for Professor Tom Jones Hughes, who recently retired from the foundation chair of Geography at University College, Dublin, where he had built up a new Geography department and pioneered the study of the landscape and societies of Ireland, with special reference to the nineteenth century. His subtle interrogation of the visual evidence of landscape and the documentary and statistical surveys produced a number of influential papers, and these, together with his encouragement of talented Irish students to undertake research into the regional and local geographical personalities of the Irish past, add up to a major contribution to historical and cultural geography. The festschrift comprises sixteen essays, and a list of Jones Hughes’ publications. The editors’ sensitive introductory essay is followed by John Andrews’ sparkling exegetical evaluation of the writings that evidence the nature of “Jones Hughes’ Ireland”. He correctly contends that “Whatever his subject . . . Jones Hughes would be a writer of remarkable power and authority, and a living refutation of the fallacy that literary skill should necessarily be used to make things easy for the reader”. Anngret Simms looks at the Irish experience of colonization in the broader context of medieval Europe, contrasting neatly with Mark Hennessy’s excellent microstudy of the evolution and decline of the medieval monastic estate of the Augustinian Priory and Hospital of New Gate, Dublin. The remainder of the essays offer similar contrasts between “big picture” reconstructions for the whole of Ireland, and regional and local studies. In the first category are Smyth’s detailed description of society and settlement based on the 1659 census, Whelan’s innovative analysis of the regional variation of the impact of Irish Catholicism, 170&1850, and William Nolan’s review of the migration policies of State land agencies in the period 1891-1980. At the regional level there are P. J. O’Connor’s essay on town and village life in county Limerick in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Smyth’s well-crafted account of flax cultivation in Ireland, Patrick O’Flanagan’s essay on Catholics and Protestants in Munster Towns c. 1659-1850, P. J. Duffy’s reflections and illustrations of the evolution of estate properties in South Ulster from 1600-1900, and Jack Burtchaell on the morphology of South Kilkenny farm villages. The rest of the essays focus on local studies, and comprise J. H. Martin’s analysis of midnineteenth century data by means of which he reconstructs the social geography of Dublin at that time, Brian Murnane’s use of the 1901 household census returns to recreate the historical urban landscape of Mountjoy Ward in Dublin, John Co11 on Gweedor (Gaoth Dobhair) in the Donegal Gaeltacht (1850-1980) and John Mannion’s superbly broad scholarly analysis of the maritime trade of Wexford in the eighteenth century. The essays are of a generally high quality, and while some contributions contain familiar material and ideas the collection as a whole is fresh, innovative and challenging. Tom Jones Hughes can be proud and well pleased that the seeds that he sowed in his pioneer researches on nineteenth-century Ireland have yielded such a rich harvest of ideas and maps. Loughborough
University
of Technology
ANNGRET SIMMS with KATHERINE SIMMS, Kells, Irish Historic
ROBIN BUTLIN
Towns Atlas No. 4 (Dublin:
Royal Irish Academy, 1990. Pp. 12+ 10 maps. IRE18*00) The Irish Historic Towns Atlas is one of the most recent additions to this European-wide project, but publication is proceeding rapidly under the enlightened sponsorship of the Royal Irish Academy. Fasicule No. 4 is by one of the series editors, Anngret Simms. The
BOOK REVIEWS
237
format of the Irish atlas was carefully designed in the light of the experience of other national series. The text is carefully integrated with the maps to illuminate the topographic development of the town; there is comprehensive, and carefully classified, documentation of the streets, buildings and other plan elements;there are reproductions of the principal source maps, of illustrations of buildings and street scenesnow lost from the townscape, of the modem Ordnance Survey plan of the town at 1:5000,and there is the reconstructed plan of the town c. 1836 at 1:2500, which is the main focus of the European Historic Towns Atlas project. The quality of reproduction is high and the loose-leaf format allows easy comparison of the maps. The English atlas could learn valuable lessons from its Irish counterpart. Kells is one of that controversial group of early Irish monastic sites which may be counted as proto-towns in the pre-Anglo-Norman period. The Columban monastery was built in the ninth century on the site of a royal dun. Markets and fairs are documented in the eleventh century, and there are surviving monuments of the preNorman period including a round tower, three stone crosses and an early-Christian stone building. The plan preserveselements of the characteristic double enclosure of such monastic proto-towns with market place to the east and fair ground to the west. Borough status was conferred by Norman Lord, Hugh de Lacy, who built a castle there, and the town was walled by the early fourteenth century. Nearly half the properties in the town were declared waste after the Cromwellian wars. Consequently there was some replanning in the eighteenth century, which does not easethe interpretation of what is already a complex, multi-period plan of great antiquity. There might be a few quibbles about the probable line of the medieval town walls, but only archaeological evidence would resolve them. Generally, the text is authoritative and reflects the current state of knowledge about the history and development of the town through to the present. The reconstruction plan is a credit to the cartographic editor, Mary Davis, with certainties being carefully distinguished from plan elements where some interpretation has been necessary. Full interpretative plans of the defences and the monastic enclosures are contained in the text. The Irish Historic Towns Atlas is a credit to its editors and publishers in every respect. Already, with this fourth fasicule, it becomes possible to make comparisons between towns since this is the second monastic town to be included. Comparative study of the topographic development of European towns is the principal aim of the whole project and the careful work of the Irish team will go far to make this aim possible. University of Birmingham
BARRI JONESand DAVID MATTINGLY, Blackwell, 1990. pp. x+ 341. &3500)
T. R. SLATER
An Atlas of Roman Britain (Oxford: Basil
There has been a need for an atlas that presents the rich evidence from Britain which is one of the most extensively explored of the regions of the Roman Empire. The endeavour is therefore to be welcomed, but this a very difficult book to use or to evaluate for two reasons. First its organization is problematical for although attractively produced with some very fine maps which are clearly drawn and easy to read they are almost impossible to access. Incredibly there is no list of the illustrations in the preliminaries, whilst the proper names which appear on the maps are not consistently listed in the index. (For instance the tribes whose territories are shown on Map 3.2 are not listed as appearing there in the index. This seriously impairs the book’s value as a work of referenceand I was reduced to flicking through to find the map which contained the information I required. Secondly although there is a list of map acknowledgements provided in the prelimi-
236
WILLIAM J. SMYTH and KEVIN WHELAN (Eds), Common Ground: Essays on the Historical Geography of Ireland (Cork: Cork University Press, 1988. Pp. xvi + 323. IRg24.00)
This fascinating and erudite collection of essays is a festschrift for Professor Tom Jones Hughes, who recently retired from the foundation chair of Geography at University College, Dublin, where he had built up a new Geography department and pioneered the study of the landscape and societies of Ireland, with special reference to the nineteenth century. His subtle interrogation of the visual evidence of landscape and the documentary and statistical surveys produced a number of influential papers, and these, together with his encouragement of talented Irish students to undertake research into the regional and local geographical personalities of the Irish past, add up to a major contribution to historical and cultural geography. The festschrift comprises sixteen essays, and a list of Jones Hughes’ publications. The editors’ sensitive introductory essay is followed by John Andrews’ sparkling exegetical evaluation of the writings that evidence the nature of “Jones Hughes’ Ireland”. He correctly contends that “Whatever his subject . . . Jones Hughes would be a writer of remarkable power and authority, and a living refutation of the fallacy that literary skill should necessarily be used to make things easy for the reader”. Anngret Simms looks at the Irish experience of colonization in the broader context of medieval Europe, contrasting neatly with Mark Hennessy’s excellent microstudy of the evolution and decline of the medieval monastic estate of the Augustinian Priory and Hospital of New Gate, Dublin. The remainder of the essays offer similar contrasts between “big picture” reconstructions for the whole of Ireland, and regional and local studies. In the first category are Smyth’s detailed description of society and settlement based on the 1659 census, Whelan’s innovative analysis of the regional variation of the impact of Irish Catholicism, 170&1850, and William Nolan’s review of the migration policies of State land agencies in the period 1891-1980. At the regional level there are P. J. O’Connor’s essay on town and village life in county Limerick in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Smyth’s well-crafted account of flax cultivation in Ireland, Patrick O’Flanagan’s essay on Catholics and Protestants in Munster Towns c. 1659-1850, P. J. Duffy’s reflections and illustrations of the evolution of estate properties in South Ulster from 1600-1900, and Jack Burtchaell on the morphology of South Kilkenny farm villages. The rest of the essays focus on local studies, and comprise J. H. Martin’s analysis of midnineteenth century data by means of which he reconstructs the social geography of Dublin at that time, Brian Murnane’s use of the 1901 household census returns to recreate the historical urban landscape of Mountjoy Ward in Dublin, John Co11 on Gweedor (Gaoth Dobhair) in the Donegal Gaeltacht (1850-1980) and John Mannion’s superbly broad scholarly analysis of the maritime trade of Wexford in the eighteenth century. The essays are of a generally high quality, and while some contributions contain familiar material and ideas the collection as a whole is fresh, innovative and challenging. Tom Jones Hughes can be proud and well pleased that the seeds that he sowed in his pioneer researches on nineteenth-century Ireland have yielded such a rich harvest of ideas and maps. Loughborough
University
of Technology
ANNGRET SIMMS with KATHERINE SIMMS, Kells, Irish Historic
ROBIN BUTLIN
Towns Atlas No. 4 (Dublin:
Royal Irish Academy, 1990. Pp. 12+ 10 maps. IRE18*00) The Irish Historic Towns Atlas is one of the most recent additions to this European-wide project, but publication is proceeding rapidly under the enlightened sponsorship of the Royal Irish Academy. Fasicule No. 4 is by one of the series editors, Anngret Simms. The
BOOK REVIEWS
237
format of the Irish atlas was carefully designed in the light of the experience of other national series. The text is carefully integrated with the maps to illuminate the topographic development of the town; there is comprehensive, and carefully classified, documentation of the streets, buildings and other plan elements;there are reproductions of the principal source maps, of illustrations of buildings and street scenesnow lost from the townscape, of the modem Ordnance Survey plan of the town at 1:5000,and there is the reconstructed plan of the town c. 1836 at 1:2500, which is the main focus of the European Historic Towns Atlas project. The quality of reproduction is high and the loose-leaf format allows easy comparison of the maps. The English atlas could learn valuable lessons from its Irish counterpart. Kells is one of that controversial group of early Irish monastic sites which may be counted as proto-towns in the pre-Anglo-Norman period. The Columban monastery was built in the ninth century on the site of a royal dun. Markets and fairs are documented in the eleventh century, and there are surviving monuments of the preNorman period including a round tower, three stone crosses and an early-Christian stone building. The plan preserveselements of the characteristic double enclosure of such monastic proto-towns with market place to the east and fair ground to the west. Borough status was conferred by Norman Lord, Hugh de Lacy, who built a castle there, and the town was walled by the early fourteenth century. Nearly half the properties in the town were declared waste after the Cromwellian wars. Consequently there was some replanning in the eighteenth century, which does not easethe interpretation of what is already a complex, multi-period plan of great antiquity. There might be a few quibbles about the probable line of the medieval town walls, but only archaeological evidence would resolve them. Generally, the text is authoritative and reflects the current state of knowledge about the history and development of the town through to the present. The reconstruction plan is a credit to the cartographic editor, Mary Davis, with certainties being carefully distinguished from plan elements where some interpretation has been necessary. Full interpretative plans of the defences and the monastic enclosures are contained in the text. The Irish Historic Towns Atlas is a credit to its editors and publishers in every respect. Already, with this fourth fasicule, it becomes possible to make comparisons between towns since this is the second monastic town to be included. Comparative study of the topographic development of European towns is the principal aim of the whole project and the careful work of the Irish team will go far to make this aim possible. University of Birmingham
BARRI JONESand DAVID MATTINGLY, Blackwell, 1990. pp. x+ 341. &3500)
T. R. SLATER
An Atlas of Roman Britain (Oxford: Basil
There has been a need for an atlas that presents the rich evidence from Britain which is one of the most extensively explored of the regions of the Roman Empire. The endeavour is therefore to be welcomed, but this a very difficult book to use or to evaluate for two reasons. First its organization is problematical for although attractively produced with some very fine maps which are clearly drawn and easy to read they are almost impossible to access. Incredibly there is no list of the illustrations in the preliminaries, whilst the proper names which appear on the maps are not consistently listed in the index. (For instance the tribes whose territories are shown on Map 3.2 are not listed as appearing there in the index. This seriously impairs the book’s value as a work of referenceand I was reduced to flicking through to find the map which contained the information I required. Secondly although there is a list of map acknowledgements provided in the prelimi-